First Racing Win at Age Eleven

Tom Dorchester was born in the Angus Ridge district in 1911, grew up there and then lived most of his adult married life at Westerose.  At the age of eleven he rode a horse in a race in Wetaskiwin and won.  He credits this win for his lifelong desire to race horses.  In 1933 he started racing cart teams and rode race horses at local competitions. but it was in 1939 that he ran his first chuckwagon race in Rimbey and it was the love of this sport that kept him pursuing wins for the next 42 years. 

Besides chuckwagon racing, in his younger days he competed in chariot races, flat horses and Roman races winning many of these events at both the Ponoka and Calgary Stampedes. 

Trailblazing to 60 Chuckwagon Wins Despite Injury

His first chuckwagon win occurred in 1944 at the Calgary Stampede, outriding for Theo Thage.  He started driving regularly in 1949 but it wasn’t until 1970, after 21 years driving his own rig, that Tom finally won the Calgary Stampede Rangeland Derby Championship, becoming the first man to win the Calgary Stampede Championship as both an outrider and as a chuckwagon driver.   He won again the next year. 

For six decades Tom competed in Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C., Manitoba and Ontario as well as the United States, and during his career he had over 60 chuckwagon wins including five Central Alberta Championships (1960,66,69,71,72), four World Championships (1966,69,70,71), and one North American Championship (1976).  

Competing in the different races was not without risk and during his career Tom suffered some terrible injuries.  In 1946 he was run over in a chuckwagon wreck in Red Deer.  Another set-back occurred in July 1973 when he broke his back in a chuckwagon race at Morris, Manitoba.  That year he was leading in the Canadian Chuckwagon standings and still ended up second.  The next year, he set a record for the fastest time at the Calgary Stampede, apparently undaunted by the injury the year before.